Part 8 (1/2)

He turned the page again.

Here there was a carefully detailed drawing of a car. Malone recognized it as a 1972 Cadillac without any effort at all.

And it had been carefully colored in with red pencil.

Wow, Malone asked himself, _What the h.e.l.l does that mean?_

He couldn't find an answer. He turned the page, hoping for some more facts that might make some sense out of what he had been seeing, but there was nothing more. All the rest of the pages in the notebook were blank.

He looked up at the cop and the doctor with a bland, blank face.

”Thanks a lot,” he told Bill. ”I thought I'd lost this book. I appreciate it.”

”Oh, that's okay, Mr. Malone,” Bill said. ”Glad to do it.”

”You don't know what this means to me,” Malone said truthfully.

”No trouble at all,” Bill said. ”Any time.” He gave Malone a big smile and turned back to the door. ”But I got to get back to my beat,” he said. ”Listen, I'll see you. And if I can be any help--”

”Sure,” Malone said. ”I'll let you know. And thanks again.”

”Welcome,” Bill said, and opened the door. He strode out with the air of a man who has just been decorated with the Silver Star, the Purple Heart and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Malone tried a few more steps and discovered that he could walk without falling down. He thanked the doctor again.

”Perfectly all right,” the doctor said. ”Nothing to it. Why, you ought to see some of the cases we get here. There was a guy here the other night with both his legs all mashed up by a--”

”I'll bet,” Malone said hurriedly. ”Well, I've got to be on my way.

Just send the bill to FBI headquarters on 69th Street.” He closed the door on the doctor's enthusiastic ”Yes, _sir!_” and went on down the hallway and out into the street. At Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Avenue he flagged a cab.

It was a h.e.l.l of a place to be, Malone thought as the cab drove away.

Where but in Greenwich Village did avenues intersect each other without so much as a by-your-leave?

”Hotel New Yorker,” he said, giving the whole thing up as a bad job.

He put his hat on his head and adjusted it painfully to the proper angle.

And that, he thought, made another little problem. The car had not only hit him on the head, it had removed his hat before doing so, and then replaced it. It had only fallen off when he'd started to get up against the lamp post.

_A nice quiet vacation_, Malone thought bitterly.

He fumed in silence all the way to the hotel, through the lobby, up in the elevator, and to the door of his room. Then he remembered the notebook.

That was important evidence. He decided to tell Boyd about it right away.

He went into the bathroom and tapped gently on the door to Boyd's connecting room. The door swung open.

Boyd, apparently, was still out painting the town--Malone considered the word _red_ and dropped the whole phrase with a sigh. At any rate, his partner was nowhere in the room.

”The h.e.l.l with it,” Malone announced loudly to no one in particular.